Study of couplings effect on the performance of a spin-current diode: Nonequilibrium Green's function based model

In this paper, spin-dependent transport through a spin diode composed of a quantum dot coupled to a normal metal and a ferromagnetic lead is studied. The current polarization and the spin accumulation are analyzed using the equations of motion method within the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism. We present a suitable method for computing Green's function without carrying out any self-consistent calculation. The influence of coupling strength and magnetic field on the spin current is studied and observed that this device cannot work as a spin diode under certain conditions.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Thermoelectric effects in a double quantum dot system weakly coupled to ferromagnetic leads

Thermoelectric effects through a serial double quantum dot system weakly coupled to ferromagnetic leads are analyzed. Formal expressions of electrical conductance, thermal conductance, and thermal coefficient are obtained by means of Hubbard operators. The results show that although the thermopower is independent of the polarization of the leads, the figure of merit is reduced by an increase of polarization. The influences of temperature and interdot tunneling on the figure of merit are also investigated, and it is observed that increase of the interdot tunneling strength results in reduction of the figure of merit. The effect of temperature on the thermal conductance is also analyzed.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Exciton Spin Dynamics in Semiconductor Quantum Wells

In this paper we will review Exciton Spin Dynamics in Semiconductor Quantum Wells. The spin properties of excitons in nanostructures are determined by their fine structure. We will mainly focus in this review on GaAs and InGaAs quantum wells which are model systems.Comment: 55 pages, 27 figure

Measurement of exciton spin coherence by nondegenerate four-wave mixing experiments in the chi((3)) regime

We demonstrate that the spin coherence relaxation of excitons can be measured in a three-beam four-wave mixing experiment in the chi((3)) regime, using a sequence of contracircularly polarized pulses. In contrast to other techniques like Faraday rotation measurement, our method allows one to access spin coherence without applying an external magnetic field. The superposition of opposite spin states (exciton-polariton spin coherence) is then probed in a nondegenerate configuration at the biexciton-exciton transition. Measurements are performed on a bulk CuCl platelet. The polariton effect is taken into account by modeling the propagation of the pulses. The exciton-polariton spin coherence time is demonstrated to be mainly determined by their spin lifetime